What is an e-passport, how to apply for it?

Ground Report | New Delhi: What is an e-passport; Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the introduction of ePassport in the year 2022-23 in the budget speech. It is said that people who go abroad with an electronic passport will have many facilities.

After all, what is an electronic passport, how does it work? And in the coming days, how will the electronic passport replace the normal passport? For all these questions, the BBC spoke to many experts and people who already use the electronic passport.

What is an e-passport

The government has been planning to implement smart electronic passports with secure biometric data. It had first announced the issuance of electronic passports in 2019. An electronic passport will have the same information as traditional paper passports, such as the holder's name and date of birth along with biometric information.

The electronic passport looks like a normal passport. An electronic microprocessor chip is used in this. It is put on the cover or pages of the passport. In the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs V. Muraleedharan said: "In the ePassport, the applicants' information will be protected on a chip in the form of a digital signature." It will contain all the information related to the passport holder. The information entered into this chip cannot be changed. If the chip is tampered with, the electronic passport will stop working.

How will it work?

The electronic passports will come with a small silicon chip embedded in the case with 64 kilobytes of memory.

• The chip will encrypt important security-related data, including the applicant's personal data digitally signed.

• Passports are likely to have a thicker front and back cover and may take a few seconds to read.

• The new passports are likely to store up to 30 visits.

• These will also have a unique digital signature for each country that can be easily verified using a certificate.

• The system will be able to detect malicious intent, such as chip tampering, and passport authentication will automatically fail in such cases.

How to apply

• The application process for the new ePassports will be the same as for traditional passports, Business Insider reported.

• So far, the government has issued 20,000 official and diplomatic ePassports, but not to ordinary citizens of India.

• The government issued the first electronic passport to former Indian President Pratibha Patil in 2008.

What are the benefits of an electronic passport?

When you travel to a country with an ordinary passport, you must first obtain the visa of the country in question. The visa is stamped in the passport. Immigration department officials check passports and visas at the airport before travel. There are often long queues to pass immigration. Only after waiting for hours does the person's number come through and he gets permission to travel.

To pass immigration in an e-passport, the person's passport and visa officer does not verify, but the automatic machine verifies. Just as the gates open as soon as the token is applied on the subway, the gates open by scanning the ePassport at the immigration gate.

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